


Tuesday I Get a Little Sideways

by FrenchTwistResistance



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: F/F, I just want caos to be a sitcom where hot middle-aged ladies kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 12:09:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchTwistResistance/pseuds/FrenchTwistResistance
Summary: The Spellmans try to have a fun day at the lake.





	Tuesday I Get a Little Sideways

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ForeverM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ForeverM/gifts).



> Kind of a prompt from the group chat.

Sabrina walks in the kitchen door, ready to start in on her excuses—no it’s reasons, they’re all legitimate reasons—as to why it took her two hours to fill a cooler with ice and soda and bottled water. But as she rolls the new cooler—not the same cooler she had left with, and there was a reason for that—into the kitchen she realizes maybe she’s not the one who needs to be explaining anything.

Zelda’s sitting in the window seat holding a cold compress to her left eye. There’s a suspiciously foreign tortoise sitting in her lap. Hilda is sitting cross-legged in a leopard-print one-piece bathing suit from circa 1962 on the hardwood in front of Zelda’s legs, and Zelda is using the hand that’s not holding the cold compress to swat at Hilda’s hands that are reaching blindly behind herself toward her as she says,

“I’m very nearly incompetent braiding hair with two hands, Hildegard. I absolutely can’t manage with just one.”

“Uh…” Sabrina says, clinging to the handle of the cooler.

Ambrose’s voice is conspicuously loud in the foyer:

“Again, we’re so sorry for your loss. And yes, you’re right. We should have been more diligent in communicating our holiday hours.” Indistinct female murmuring. “Of course… yes… a discount seems reasonable.”

Zelda drops the cold compress right onto Hilda’s head. Hilda neither has the advantage of having been eavesdropping on the conversation in the hallway nor seeing Zelda’s concerned-about-profit-margins-and-indignant-about-a-customer’s-blatant-disregard-for-family-privacy face and takes it as an attack. Before Zelda can stand and address this woman who ignored the closed sign—it is a small sign, but a sign nevertheless—Hilda sloppily jumps up and throws the cold compress back at Zelda. It bounces off her chest and slides down to land on the tortoise.

“Oh I’m so sorry, love!” Hilda says, but she’s obviously talking to the tortoise, whom she scoops up and cradles in her arms, begins singing softly, “‘Hey, hey mama said the way you move  
Gon' make you sweat, gon' make you groove—’”

“Yes, thank you for your patience and your business. We’ll be in touch,” Ambrose’s voice says. Zelda’s lit a cigarette and is puffing furiously mid-hiss at Hilda:

“That’s not a baby! And that’s not a lullaby!”

“Anything’s a baby if you can rock it in your arms! They feel things through their shells, Zelds! And anything’s a lullaby if you sing it sweetly!”

The front door shuts. Sabrina is still standing in the middle of the kitchen with the cooler as Ambrose enters, claps his hands, says,

“Well.” He looks at the three women in turn. “Shall we?”

“Do we have a life vest small enough for Mr. Simmons? Oh never mind. He can ride in the innertube with me. You did inflate the innertube?” Hilda says. Ambrose opens his mouth to say something, but Hilda turns, points a drunken but accusatory finger at Zelda. “And don’t you dare. He’s a tortoise. It’s turtles that swim!”

Zelda rolls her eyes and blows a smoke ring, gathers herself into a semblance of her imposing, erect stature although she has a pretty gnarly black eye forming.

“I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun,” Zelda says evenly. “But it may behoove us to clean up our messes first.”

“Your mess!” Hilda says. Zelda narrows her eyes, harrumphs. She looks Hilda up and down, and then her penetrating gaze moves to rest on Ambrose.

“As far as I’m concerned, this is your fault.” She deposits the butt of her cigarette in a half-empty beer bottle on the kitchen island. “I’m changing into my bathing suit. By the time I return, I expect this to be taken care of.” She disappears up the stairs. 

Sabrina stands staring. Hilda is on the kitchen floor, attempting to feed the tortoise a pickle spear. And Ambrose is running a hand through his hair.

“Uhm. What’s been—?” Sabrina starts.

“No time for that just yet,” Ambrose says. “I need you to spot me.”

xxx

Ambrose is newly free. He’s been spending a lot of time doing church business, dicking around at Dorian Gray’s. He distinctly remembers having hobbies that weren’t those types of things, but he’s so used to what he’s used to, and these are comfortable—enough like what he’s used to to not be too jarring. But he remembers doing outdoor things. Things with other people who liked him for reasons other than theology and biology. He used to be very good at water skiing. He had been an adequate setter in a group of friends that really enjoyed beach volleyball.

And as the seasons change and he acquires more and more freedom, he sees the heaviness over his home, over his family. And he remembers that before, in that actual before time, before his crimes, his aunties had been just as athletic and carefree. He remembers in particular a vacation the whole family had taken. Edward had spent most of the time surfing and chatting up girls. Zelda had won an arm wrestling competition half drunk on mojitos with a cigarette in her other hand as Hilda had cheered her on and then had become increasingly nude and loud as she’d become increasingly more drunk. Hilda had won the hula hooping competition that same night although Ambrose is suspicious she doesn’t remember most of the details of the evening. He laughs at the memory. Ambrose loves drunk Hilda and laments that he doesn’t see nearly enough of her.

It’s finally almost hot, and Ambrose suggests they take a little day trip to the lake. He wants to see people he loves outside of their usual context and to be seen, as well. He wants them all to relax, have fun. He knows Zelda loves to fish—to sit in the sun and breeze and drink and chain smoke and contemplate life until she can hook something and reel it in, kill it, have something to show for her patience. He knows Hilda loves to swim—have her body overtaken in the current, float, submerge herself and see what’s beneath, re-emerge—like the Cain pit without the dying. And Sabrina. She’s a good server for beach volleyball and happy to be included. She and Ambrose share that—a lust for life, an enjoyment of enjoyment. He thinks it will be a perfect outing for all of them.

But there are obstacles he doesn’t anticipate.

xxx

Zelda’s at her vanity inspecting her eyebrows. Hilda’s at the bathroom door brushing her teeth. Hilda’s watching Zelda plucking and applying concealer. Hilda’s electric toothbrush buzzes to a stop, and she says around the foam in her mouth,

“Are you really putting on makeup to go to the lake?”

Zelda continues scrutinizing herself in the mirror, says,

“Might I remind you, sister. We arm wrestled for who would rent the boat. And I lost. So I must be seen in public today.” Hilda rolls her eyes and disappears into the bathroom to spit and rinse. When she comes back to the doorway, Zelda is applying mascara. Hilda scoffs:

“Kyle Simmons at Boats-R-Us, which is located in a self-storage unit might I add, is hardly the public.”

“Public enough,” Zelda says. They look at each other through reflections in the vanity’s mirror.

“You look nice,” Hilda says.

“Do I?” Zelda says into the mirror, but then she turns and looks up into Hilda’s actual eyes.

“I’m a lot of things, Zelds, but not a liar,” Hilda says and then kisses her languidly on the mouth. “Fix your lipstick and get us a pontoon, yeah?”

xxx

Sabrina doesn’t have the mental capacity to wonder why Auntie Hilda is staying back to pack the car. Sabrina knows Auntie Zee is more strategic about these logistical details as well as she knows Auntie Hilda can broker a better deal at Boats-R-Us. She simply accepts it as she strategizes her own role today. 

She intends to take the Crown Vic to the gas station to get ice.

But this big black beauty won’t start. Maybe it’s the battery. Maybe it’s the alternator. Maybe it’s the starter. Maybe it’s a lot of things. But regardless, the Crown Vic is out of commission, and Auntie Hilda is packing the Buick, and Sabrina refuses to have anything to do with the Cadillac hearse.

So she calls Harvey and borrows his pick up.

And as accommodating as he is, he’s also terse and curt and brusque and leaves her with the keys and no instructions. And the cooler—without anything inside it to weigh it down, and without any tips on tie-downs—soon is gone, flying free somewhere in the woods.

xxx

“I’d like a pontoon,” Zelda says.

She’s standing in the sparse parking lot of a self-storage facility. Kyle Simmons is standing a few feet away from her, smiling smugly.

“And why is that, baby? You can’t handle something fast?” Kyle Simmons says, stroking his sideburn.

“Because I want it. And the customer is always right,” Zelda says. She can feel her ire rising, but she’s still trying to be diplomatic.

Simmons laughs, and Zelda tries very hard not to hate him.

He steps toward a tow truck. (He also runs Tows-R-Us, from a different unit in the self-store facility.)

They’re negotiating a price as he’s dicking with a winch. He’s better at being smug and condescending than he is with machinery. And Zelda is better at being bitter and petty than she is at negotiating.

A chain snaps, and it knocks haphazardly into Zelda’s face, and Zelda’s reflex is to curse the culprit, whether they’d intended harm or not. But she can’t help but think he deserves it.

xxx

“It’s a little early for that, isn’t it,” Hilda says as Ambrose hands her a Miller High Life at nine am.

“Maybe,” Ambrose says. “But you’re pre-gaming.”

“Excuse me, what?”

Ambrose sets down the innertube he’s been inspecting for holes.

“You know how Auntie Zee likes American football? Well fans of that game often get themselves ready at tailgate parties where they drink a lot of beer in the parking lot before kick-off time.”

They look at each other.

“Sounds fun,” Hilda says finally, taking a swig of the proffered beer.

Hilda packs the car. There are blankets, there is sunscreen and bugspray, there is ten pound line, there is a small grill and a bag of charcoal, there are marshmallows and graham crackers, there is a tent just in case.

But meanwhile she’s drinking beer after beer:

She’d started off in a long skirt and flannel and cardigan, but with each successive beer she’s shed another layer.

It hadn’t been an issue until the woman had knocked on the door.

Hilda had been the closest to the door, and so she had opened it.

A grieving widow on the stoop, a giddy witch in only underwear at the threshold.

“Hello, beautiful. Can you not read?” Hilda slurs, motioning to the “closed” sign. 

Ambrose kicks the door closed and shoulders Hilda in a fireman’s carry. He deposits her onto the window seat. Hilda says,

“I should change into my bathing suit. Lake day!”

She stumbles up the steps.

xxx

“I don’t exactly know what Auntie Zee did to make a man into a tortoise, but if we’re going to the lake today we need to figure it out…”

“Yeah. Of course,” Sabrina says.

xxx

Hilda is floating in an innertube in the lake. She’s sipping a beer. Zelda swims up to her, says,

“You don’t feel bad at all about my black eye?”

“It looks good on you,” Hilda says.

Zelda overturns the innertube, and Hilda goes under.

Hilda splutters.

“I said what I said,” Hilda says as she hooks her arms around Zelda’s neck.


End file.
